by Kara Lennox
“Sydney, I’m searching for your office but I can’t find it. I’m standing out on the corner of Atlantic and Court streets looking like an idiot. Someone handed me a dollar because they thought I was homeless. Please help.”
Russ was here? In Brooklyn? The man she’d firmly believed would never set foot outside central Texas had gotten on a plane and flown to the biggest, most crowded city in America to see her?
She went to her window and looked out. Oh, my God. There he was, standing across the street by Your Personal Assistant, Inc., which was a mailbox and secretarial service. After a stalking incident a couple of years back, she didn’t give out her physical address to people she didn’t know. The address on her business card was the one Russ had found.
Her heart ached as she looked at him, so out of place with his cowboy hat and his jeans and boots.
She decided to take pity on him. She would direct him to her office, accept his apology and send him back to Texas where he clearly belonged. She dialed the number, and he answered instantly.
“Sydney?”
“I can see you from my window. Cross the street. Turn right and come in the second doorway. I’ll buzz you up. Take the elevator to the third floor.” She disconnected and watched as he followed her directions.
When he got off the elevator, she was standing in the hallway, waiting for him, her arms folded. She didn’t intend to make this easy for him. But then she realized she’d already made it pretty hard. He’d come all the way to New York just to see her.
“I was wrong,” he said.
“Wow, that’s a news flash.”
“I made a mistake.”
“You blew it, big-time. Do you know I was actually thinking about moving to Texas? That’s how crazy I am—was—about you.”
“You don’t have to move. I could live here. New Yorkers probably need outdoor adventures in the worst way. I could do tours of the Hudson River and, uh, sewer explorations or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You would never move to New York.”
“If that’s what it takes to be with you, Sydney, then, yes, I would. Not only yes, but hell, yes. Who cares about where you live? It’s how you live and who you live with that matter.”
She studied him, amazed at the lengths he was going to. Was it possible? Could he really care for her that much?
“You just don’t like it that I was the one to walk away.” She was grasping here, because he was getting to her. She’d sworn she would never speak to him again, that his name was no longer a part of her vocabulary. Yet here she was, standing a few feet from him, having to focus hard on not closing the distance between them and throwing herself against him, pressing her nose into his ubiquitous flannel shirt and inhaling that wonderful, manly male smell that was his and no one else’s.
“You didn’t walk away,” he argued. “I drove you away. I knew I’d made a mistake before your car cleared the garage. If you really don’t have any interest in seeing me, that’s one thing. But if you’re angry and hurt that I didn’t trust you—and you have every right to be—there might be a chance you’ll get over it.”
“In fifty years,” she shot back, folding her arms. “Or a hundred.”
“That mad, huh?”
“It’s not just that I’m mad. I…I…”
The elevator doors opened and a cleaning woman emerged with her cart and a vacuum cleaner. Giving Sydney and Russ a curt nod, she plugged in the vacuum cleaner and proceeded to clean the hall carpet.
Obviously they couldn’t continue this conversation here in the hallway. Reluctantly, Sydney turned and led Russ down to her apartment. The moment Russ entered her home, a streak of brown fur went straight for him. Blossom bounced on her hind legs, then rebounded off Russ’s knee and circled around in a dance of puppy joy. Oh, boy, a new friend.
“What is this?” Russ went down to the floor in a heartbeat, welcoming the exuberant puppy into his arms. She bathed his face in dog kisses.
“She needed a home,” Sydney said, cross that she’d been found out.
“You don’t like dogs,” Russ said, laughing as he tried to push the puppy away. It was like pushing the ocean.
“Do you wonder why? She’s the stupidest, most badly behaved animal on the planet.” Sydney sat on the arm of her sofa, defeated. “She would have ended up at the animal shelter if I hadn’t bought her. I was perfectly happy without a dog.”
Russ scratched Blossom behind the ears and amazingly she calmed down. “She looks just like Nero did when he was a pup. Are you going to keep her?”
“You want her? She’s yours.” Of course, she didn’t mean it.
“Okay. But I suspect if she comes, you’ll come with her. You’re crazy about this dog, I can tell.”
This conversation wasn’t going at all how Sydney thought it would. She hadn’t expected to be tempted. She had naively believed that seeing Russ face to face she could banish him once and for all from her thoughts, shut off the memories in a closed file in her mind and get on with her life.
“I can’t be with a man who’s going to think the worst of me at every opportunity. I can’t be with a man who doubts me, who has no faith in me. I’m not going to live my life trying to prove my loyalty. If I’m late for a date, will you assume I’ve been with another man? If I have a friendly chat with the grocery check boy, will you call it flirting? Will you be checking my pockets for notes from secret lovers, checking out my cell phone to see who I’ve been talking to?”
“I’m not like that,” he said, standing up and giving Blossom one last pat. “I’m not normally jealous or suspicious. I’m very laid-back.”
“What I saw yesterday morning was not laid-back.”
“It was an isolated incident. I was shocked by those reporters. You’d been talking on the phone earlier, kind of secretive in the middle of the night, and I put two and two together and came up with five hundred. It won’t happen again, I swear it. Just give me another chance. You can put me on probation.”
How was she supposed to say no to that? She was willing to bet this man didn’t humble himself very often. When she said nothing, because she was too busy hyperventilating, he kept going. She suspected he would keep talking until he convinced her or she kicked him out.
“I know we haven’t known each other very long, but I’m thinking you’re the one I want to be with the rest of my life. Sometimes a man just knows when something is right. I knew when I saw Linhart for the first time that I wanted to live there forever. I knew when Bert offered to sell me the general store that it was meant to be. And I knew when I held you in my arms when we were dancing, and even more when I kissed you, we had something special together. What I’m trying to say is that I love you.”
Sydney blinked back tears. Was this really happening?
Blossom was busy gnawing on Russ’s cowboy boots. Russ shook his foot, trying to dislodge the puppy. “Do you know how hard it is to declare your love with a dog attached to your shoe? C’mon, puppy, don’t take away whatever small amount of dignity I might have left.”
Sydney had run out of resistance. How could she not forgive a man with a puppy attached to his shoe? “I love you, too, you know? Despite my best efforts.”
His sexy mouth started to widen into a grin, but he stopped it. “Is there a but? As in, ‘but I could never spend my life with you’?”
She shook her head. “Can I kiss you now?”
“Um, Blossom beat you to it. Would you settle for a really good hug?”
She held out her arms. In a flash Russ had her in his embrace. He hugged her long and hard. “I was so afraid I’d never get to do this again. I mean it about moving to New York, too. There’s no law that says you have to be the one to disrupt your life and I would never ask you to move away from your father when he needs you, or your job, since you love it.”
“I don’t care where we live. Just so we’re together.” She could do her kind of work anywhere as long as she wasn’t too far from a city. Austin would do.
She would move to Texas in a heartbeat if not for her father. But they could figure out something, she was sure of it.
The phone in her office rang. She considered ignoring it, but she wasn’t really in a good position to turn down work. Russ loosened his hold on her enough that she could slip into her office and grab the phone. “Baines Security.”
“Wade Clancy returning your call.”
Oh, hell. The bankruptcy lawyer. She refused to let that reminder dampen her happiness. It was just money. She made an appointment for the following afternoon, then wrote down the list of things she would need to bring with her—financial statements, tax returns and such.
Russ played with Blossom while Sydney conducted business. He loved how cool and efficient she was on the phone. No one talking to her would guess the passion that lay just beneath the surface.
He didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help hearing part of her conversation, and he realized she was talking to someone about bankruptcy. Oh, hell, he couldn’t let her do that. He’d forgotten his most important reason for coming here. Well, second-most important, after making up with Sydney. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a rumpled and oddly contoured stack of papers. He waited until Sydney hung up, then wordlessly handed it to her.
“You’re taking this back—no arguments.”
She looked at the contract, then burst out laughing. “How long did it take you to Scotch-tape this back together?”
“Only a couple of hours.”
Then she sobered. “Russ, are you sure?”
“I’ve already talked to my mom and she took the news far better than I would have expected. I told her I would set up retirement funds for both of us and for Bert, so we don’t have to worry in our old age, but the rest is going to the Wildlife Preservation Cooperative, earmarked to buy land in the Hill Country and designate it a protected wilderness area. She thinks I need to see a psychiatrist, maybe a whole team of them, but she’ll adjust to the idea. So you can just call that bankruptcy lawyer and cancel your appointment.”
“You’re a strange but generous man.”
“The gesture is completely selfish. I want to raise my kids in a place that still has unspoiled woods and meadows and rivers and lakes. I don’t want Bert’s cabin to end up surrounded by ugly housing developments with cookie-cutter minimansions and no trees.”
Sydney reached for her coat. “C’mon, let’s go. I want you to meet someone.”
“Your father?”
She nodded. “Don’t be put off if he doesn’t give you the warmest of receptions. We spent yesterday evening eating tempura, getting tipsy on saki and trashing you. But he’ll warm up when he sees the contract.”
They put on coats, then walked the seven blocks to her father’s building, their gloved hands clasped. Blossom was on her leash, her behavior impossible. She charged at every person she saw wanting to make friends, wound her leash around Sydney’s legs every thirty seconds or so, and generally made a nuisance of herself.
“Nero’s going to love her,” Russ said with a laugh as Sydney unwrapped the leash from a lamppost. “She needs obedience training, though.”
“It’s on my list.”
They passed a jewelry store, and Russ stopped and looked in the window. “Let’s go in here.”
Sydney hesitated at the door.
“I need to buy my mother a peace offering,” Russ said. “She wants a diamond necklace bigger than the one her friend Eleanor has, and I figure I can unbend my principles enough to do that one thing for her. You can help me pick it out.”
“Oh, okay.”
“But you might look at engagement rings, too.”
For a moment, she had that deer-in-headlights look and he worried that he’d pushed for too much. But he couldn’t help it. He wanted no secrets between them, so she should know just exactly how serious his intentions were.
“If that was a marriage proposal, it lacked a certain something,” she said with a nervous giggle. She looked absolutely adorable, standing there with the dog’s leash wrapped around her once again.
“If I were to do a better job of it, would you say yes?”
She nodded without hesitation.
“Okay, just checking.”
Thirty minutes later, Russ left the store with a necklace in his pocket that was even more spectacular than the one Winnie had picked out at Stover’s. He also had a pretty good idea what type of diamond ring Sydney would like. He would buy that later and give it to her while on one knee in some appropriately romantic place, since that was what she wanted. But right now he was content with the fact that he and Sydney were together. Wherever they ended up, it would be home, because it would be filled with love.
Epilogue
They waited until April for the wedding. It took that long to handle all the paperwork associated with Russ’s inheritance, to set up the trusts and for Sydney to pay off all her father’s debts.
Lowell appeared to be doing a lot better. He’d joined a grief-management group and had started working again. Sydney had patiently showed him how to keep the books—something he’d never bothered with when Shirley was around to handle it.
“I’ll get the hang of it,” he’d said as he struggled with learning the accounting computer program. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, Sydney, but you have your own life to lead.”
“I’ll always be just a phone call away,” she said, and she’d said it again and again as she’d made all the arrangements to move her things down to Texas.
But finally it was all done. Sydney had taken out a Yellow Pages ad, and Russ had helped her set up a spare bedroom in his house as her home office.
By April 1st, she was officially a Texan and about to officially become a married woman. She’d never had a single qualm about marrying Russ. The fact he was stubborn about some things—like his absolute refusal to be interviewed by any reporter—only made him more appealing.
They’d intentionally kept the wedding low-key. Although the press had lost interest in Russ soon after reporting that he was giving his money away, Sydney didn’t want to take any chances. So they had the wedding at Russ’s home and invited only family and a few close friends. Sydney had worn her mother’s 1970s wedding dress, which was simple and classic and had made Lowell cry, but in a good way. The ceremony was short and sweet, and afterward, in true Texas style, they had a barbecue.
Sydney, literally wearing a trash bag over her dress, sat at a picnic table making a dent in a plate of ribs. Russ was in the backyard playing with a couple of kids—Bert’s great-grandkids—and Blossom. He’d already changed out of his dress clothes, which didn’t surprise her. He might look great in a well-tailored suit, but he was far more comfortable in his jeans.
“He’s gonna be great when y’all have kids of your own,” Lowell said. He was sitting beside Sydney at the picnic table, chowing down on a chicken leg. “And this’ll be a great place to raise ’em. Man, it’s beautiful here. I haven’t been back in so long, I’d forgotten how beautiful spring in Texas could be.”
Sometimes Sydney forgot her dad had been raised here. “Who would have ever guessed that I’d be moving to a small town in Texas?”
“Well, it’s in your blood, I guess. You have a lot of your mother in you, but you have a lot of me, too.”
Sydney considered that a high compliment. “Thanks, Dad.”
“What would you think about having me as a neighbor?”
“What?” Had she heard right?
“There’s a nice little lake house just down the road that’s for sale. It needs work, but that’s okay.”
“What about Baines & Baines?”
He sighed. “Fact is, the work’s no fun without your mother. Thanks to you, I’m fixed to retire early and I’m thinking that’s what I’d like to do. Get away from those cold New York winters. Do some fishing—I used to win prizes in bass tournaments. I bet you didn’t know that.”
No, she didn’t. “Oh, Dad, I’d love to have you down
here. Aunt Carol would love it, too. And if you get bored you could do some work for me.”
“I’ll do it, then.”
Russ joined them at the picnic table. He had a grass stain on his shoulder and a piece of grass in his hair, which Sydney lovingly removed. Her handsome husband. She had to pinch herself hourly, because she was so happy it almost had to be a dream. And now her father would be close by.
Her whole family. Russ didn’t yet know, but there would be another family member come next November. She smiled a secret smile, anticipating the look on his face when she told him. They’d been reasonably careful about birth control…though there was that one time. That was all it took, apparently. Her future son or daughter was just as stubborn and determined as his or her father.
And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0594-3
ONE STUBBORN TEXAN
Copyright © 2007 by Karen Leabo.
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